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About Love Kintyre

The Kintyre peninsula is one of the most remarkable, unspoilt and beautiful parts of Scotland. With destination marketing described by business leaders in 2016 as 'sub par' - we decided things needed a reboot.

The elevator pitch

In 2016, the official destination marketing of Argyll was described by Nicholas Ferguson CBE – the CEO of BSkyB – as ‘sub par’.

Officially, the Kintyre peninsula is just one tiny cog competing with ten other DMOs (Destination Marketing Organisations) under the umbrella of the Argyll and the Isles tourism brand, many of which feature well established high volume tourism areas with easy connections to the central belt.

The experience of businesses and individuals within Kintyre supports the notion that Kintyre benefits little from official Argyll-wide initiatives.

Marketing initiatives funded by public money always fall into the same traps – too many stakeholders, too many committee meetings, and supplier selection processes that favour the least-able businesses from outwith the area.

So much more than a destination

We created the Love Kintyre brand because we saw what no-one else did – that Kintyre is so much more than a destination.

Instead of marketing Kintyre as a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy – sticking a handful of hotels onto a website and hoping for the best – Love Kintyre was designed from the ground up to be a purpose-built showcase for the enormous wealth of creative talent that exists here.

It’s not just the award-winning food, drink, music, art, dance, craft and everything else which has been built on a 200 year old heritage of seafood and whisky. Kintyre is home to multi-award-winning glamp-sites, boutique hotels, tea-rooms, music venues, harbours, a century-old restored art-nouveu cinema as well as one of the finest social history collections this side of Glasgow.

Kintyre has much to be proud of – served as it is by hundreds of genuinely passionate and innovative artisan businesses. Love Kintyre gives those businesses a voice – allowing the vibrancy of the local community to shine through. It gives local people a chance to be the heroes in our story.

Bold, brave, and beautiful branding

Argyll-based initiatives avoid Kintyre altogether, focusing instead on destinations that are ‘just an hour away from the Central Belt’. Love Kintyre was designed to be a bold, brave and beautiful brand – tackling marketing challenges head-on. We emphasise the distance travelled to reach us as being the whole point of coming here.

Digital first

Love Kintyre is a digital first strategy – which means we focus our efforts on content creation and curation for social media and our website rather than printing millions of leaflets which are never read or seen.

Our priority is harnessing and developing User Generated Content – giving visitors a trusted insight into the vibrant community and fascinating place that we call home. Visitors can share their experiences with the hashtag #LoveKintyre, and they can give us the right to use their content in digital and print campaigns with the hashtag #LoveKintyreOK.

100% made in Kintyre

At Love Kintyre, we have a strict ‘eat-our-own-dogfood’ policy – which means we’re proud to tell you that we are 100% designed, built and operated here in Kintyre.